John Munson/The Star-LedgerNets owner Mikhail Prokhorov visits the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, future home of the Nets. At right is Forest City Ratner Companies Chairman and CEO Bruce Ratner, the Barclays Center developer.

NEW YORK — As everyone knows, there’s no better substitute for substantive dialogue than a photo op and some glib remarks while standing in front of a construction site.

So in keeping with this tradition, Mikhail Prokhorov faced the media inside a dusty Barclays Center in Brooklyn Tuesday, and answered questions for the first time in 14 months. One of them had to do with his strategy if Mark

Cuban, owner of the defending champs, pursues Deron Williams in free agency.
Prokhorov downshifted into trash-talk: “Let the best man win,” the Nets owner said. “If he wins, I will crush him in the kick-boxing throw-down.”

Cuban, the kind of guy who can turn gall bladder surgery into a pay-per-view event, didn’t let it pass. Evoking his WWE cameo a few summers back, the Mavericks owner
e-mailed, “Tell him he might want to see me put Sheamus on the ground — the first person to do so, by the way — before he goes there.”

Actually, if you recall the viral video, Cuban ended up getting thrown through a large wooden table by this Sheamus guy, but some owners can declare victory even after bruised ribs and a spinal contusion.

Sure, you’re amused by the exchange. But frankly, sometimes we wonder whether this is what this league is turning into. We have no distinct memory of Wellington Mara and Art Rooney passing out woof tickets, anyway.

But glib is what Prokhorov does well, yet if you’re looking for something substantial, keep looking. He never gives the impression that he is in control of the Nets franchise, as even his clichés — “It is easy to have a playoff team, but it is very difficult to have a championship team, so we need to be very patient and go step by step” — are diametrically opposed to what his GM practices.

So it occurs to you: Prokhorov can’t speak of the future because he knows very little about the present. He threw some names out there (Gerald Wallace, Marshon Brooks) to signify that he’s been paying attention, but overall, he still sounds less engaged than the average towel boy.

It’s time to admit the obvious: We’re talking about an absentee owner here, as this guy never really had any intention of doing much more than writing checks.

Is that a bad thing? We’ll find out soon enough. It could work out just fine, as long as GM Billy King keeps his franchise player in Brooklyn and knits the other pieces together. It could be a disaster, if the young men deciding where they should spend the balance of their careers learn this immutable truth: The owner is always the best gauge for where the organization belongs in the hierarchy.

Maybe you don’t pay much attention to owners, but some are creations of a fawning media — convinced they are geniuses like Auerbach and a star like Jordan, with ideas that will revolutionize not only the internet and venture capitalism, but the NBA itself.
The problem, however, is that they find themselves in a transparent business that has a universal accounting standard: wins and losses.

And ultimately, those young guys make decisions on their futures by gleaning from the owner’s conversation whether he has a basketball vision, or is just stopping by after kick-boxing lessons or running a presidential campaign.

We may never know this about Prokhorov, so assume the latter. That’s not a criticism, that’s what his American profile is destined to be. He has yet to disclose what he has learned about the NBA in his two years as a majority owner, because it would be a waste of time.

A waste of his time, actually.

His futile bid in the Russian presidential election was described in many ways — a fool’s errant, a brave challenge to an autocratic bully, a Kremlin-created charade to give the pretense of legitimacy, or an act of monumental arrogance.

Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov visits BrooklynThe New Jersey Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov stopped by the Barclays Center, his team's future home in Brooklyn, for a tour and to answer questions from reporters. He discussed his time in New Jersey, his goals for a championship team and the future of point guard Deron Williams. Video by John Munson/The Star-Ledger

(He is an improvement over the current tyrant in one respect: Prokhorov has come out in favor of free elections, and letting media become independent of the state — beliefs shaped by his more liberal sister, a brilliant academic named Irina Prokhorova.)

Indeed, Prokhorov, 46, is charismatic and shrewd, but he has a fatal flaw that many Russians will never tolerate in a president: He is an oligarch.

To some Russian people, oligarchs are robber barons who stole their raw materials — notably during the great privatization movement of the 1990s, when Prokhorov bought Norilsk Nickel for $250 million and turned it into a $60 billion behemoth.

That, of course, was another lifetime. He sold that company just before the crash, and has since put much of his fortune into gold and aluminum, and is reportedly worth somewhere in the rich neighborhood of $13 billion.

He offered to give up almost all of it if he won the election, by the way — a move that was widely interpreted as a desperate pander. He ended up with 8 percent of the vote, and is thinking of running again, because he found consolation in a recent survey.

“This election was for me a great testimony,” he said. “Twenty percent of Russian population are looking for changes, severe changes to the economy ... (and ultimately) the majority of Russia will fight for the changes. That is why I am optimistic.”

Somehow, that sounds like the exit poll equivalent of bruised ribs and a spinal contusion. But you grab victory wherever you can find it. Sooner or later, Prokhorov will learn that it’s more elusive in the NBA. A spiffy new building in Brooklyn will start to look empty, and he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who can do anything about it.